Congressional Candidate’s Husband Behind Censorship of Free Speech?

The National Republican Congressional Committee is claiming censorship over an ad critical of a Democrat congressional candidate in New York’s 19th District. The group paid for an ad to be placed in The New Republic. The publication initially accepted, but upon further review refused to run the ad critical of Sean Eldridge. Chris Hughes is the owner and publisher of The New Republic. Hughes also just happens to be Eldridge’ husband.

On Friday, the NRCC submitted a 300×250 advertisement to run on the TNR homepage that read, “Is Your Vote For Sale? Sean Eldridge Thinks So…” and directed readers toward an NRCC-backed anti-Eldridge website. The price for a three-day run was $500.

Bob Brennan, TNR’s sales director, had initially expressed interest in the NRCC’s inquiry about an advertisement but soon shot it down after learning that it was directed against his boss’s husband.

“We reserve the right to approve all creative which runs on our site,” he wrote to the NRCC on Monday. “Your creative does not meet with our approval. Thank you for considering The New Republic.”

After initially expressing interest, TNR’s sales director shot down the ad buy once they saw that the ad was critical of Sean Eldridge, the liberal Democrat candidate for New York’s 19th District. Why? Could it possibly have to do with the fact that Chris Hughes, the owner and publisher of TNR, is Eldridge’s husband?

Unless the New Republic wants to admit that it will be serving as the communications shop for Eldridge’s congressional campaign, it needs to explain why they feel it is appropriate to censor speech and keep the truth away from voters in the 19th District.

Eldridge is running against former officer in the U.S. Army and current congressman Chris Gibson.

About the AuthorRusty Weiss

Rusty Weiss is a freelance journalist focusing on the conservative movement and its political agenda. He has been writing conservatively charged articles for several years in the upstate New York area, and his writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, American Thinker, FoxNews.com, Big Government, the Times Union, and the Troy Record. He is also Editor of one of the top conservative blogs of 2012, the Mental Recession.